Tea Partiers gather at Veterans park

TUPELO – A message of returning to biblical principles in government and reducing the government’s role in personal welfare was shared by Tea Party representatives during a rally at Veterans Park on Saturday.
The event featuring speakers from various backgrounds and about 50 onlookers and Tea Party members had a theme of “Hey y’all, it’s not working.”
“We got the theme because I think you can apply that to every policy that’s out there,” said event organizer Grant Sowell. “Foreign policy, if you look at Libya and Benghazi, that’s not working. The public education system, between sinking more money into it and then what went on with the teacher’s unions in Chicago and Wisconsin, that’s not working. If you look at redefining marriage from what God says it is, that’s not going to work. Trying to redefine what is women’s health care and calling it ‘the woman’s body’ when it’s about the body inside her.”
Dr. Everett McKibben, a family practitioner in Starkville, brought a copy of the 2,000-page Affordable Care Act as a prop during his talk about why the act isn’t good for private health and businesses.
“I’m a private business owner, and from my standpoint, it would be cheaper for me to pay the fine than provide health insurance for my employees,” McKibben said. “Now, I’m not going to do that.”
McKibben said his fear is that all health-care expenses could become government expenses in 10 to 15 years, if the public insurance puts private insurance companies out of business.
David Shankle, an economics professor at Blue Mountain College, spoke to the crowd about the current administration’s economic policy and how he fears it is dangerous.
“We’re relying on public institutions to give us what we used to get from private industry,” he said. “One way of fixing it would be supply-side economics. Instead of trying to stimulate the economy, you put the money back in the people’s hands as opposed to the government spending it.”
Everyone seemed to agree, by way of applause, that taxes need to be lower, the debt needs to be controlled, and policies need to be biblically based.
jb.clark@journalinc.com